"On free schools, I am saying that we need to apply a set of tests, that we are not going to take an absolute policy of opposing them.

"The tests should be: will the school raise standards for pupils and parents, will it contribute to a narrowing of the achievement gap between rich and poor and what is the wider impact of that school?"

On Sky News on Sunday morning - after criticism from some on the left of the party, Twigg clarified his remarks. He said that while he didn't oppose individual schools, he wasn't saying that Labour backed the policy.

"What I said this week is we oppose the policy, we don't want a free-for-all in British education, but as these schools open, some of them are going to be really good, some of them are going to be run by really good people and we're not going to put ourselves in a position as a Labour party of opposing those schools".

These positions don't contradict each other. It would be absurd for a future Labour government to close down successful schools. But the free schools programme may not be the best way to transform the lives of the poorest children.

Unlike Labour's academies, the first wave of free schools is skewed towards middle-class neighbourhoods. That may change with the second wave, in which some teacher groups committed to reaching poor children are prominent.

There's another argument to consider here - and that's how a future Labour government should deliver public services.

Twigg has already set out his stall on this one. In the Purple Book, the outline of a new agenda for Labour which was published last month, Twigg writes: "By involving the public in civic activities, they are more likely to continue to support a policy or government activism because they feel ownership of the process."

That's why Gove's question in the Commons - "What about the cold shoulder he is turning to the parents who want to set up free schools everywhere?" - is such a dangerous one for Labour. The challenge, as Twigg points out, is to stop school choice becoming a free-for-all in which those with sharpest elbows win.

There's a trap here - how do you ensure fairness without being cast as the bureaucratic ogre who is setting limits on parents' freedom? Plenty of councils of all political stripes will experience that sort of caricature as more free schools are set up.

Beyond this, there's a bigger challenge for Twigg. That is to transform Labour's approach from criticising or endorsing aspects of Gove's agenda, and rethink the party's approach to education. Compass, the left-wing pressure group, has started to do that.

In a new e-book, Education for the Good Society, Neal Lawson and Ken Spours argue for a new comprehensive ideal that embraces free schools. They point out that the left hasn't always relied on the state to provide services like education. Free schools, they suggest, can be compared to traditional self-help organisations like the Workers Educational Association, founded at the start of the last century to give working class adults access to education.

But there's still a role for government to play, they argue, if free schools aren't going to become the basis of greater segregation.

In a comment piece for the Guardian, they say: "Either too much state-sponsored universalism or too much market-based freedom have served education badly. It is time for a new democratic paradigm in which government creates the broad frameworks of equity and quality and, within them, provides the freedoms for teachers, parents, pupils and communities to decide how we can learn to live together."

The book (PDF) contains some controversial proposals for making the education system fairer - including ballots for school admissions and the abolition of grammar schools.

Gove has already shown that he's not averse to a spot of state intervention. What does Twigg think? He's due to attend the book's launch in Westminster tonight.